Weekly TV Wrap Up – August 6th, 2009

Today’s Weekly TV Wrap Up has some news about the Syfy channel picking up a show called Alphas, news on Chuck air dates, plus renewal news on In Plain Sight and other USA shows.

I’m also chatting about some Ghost Whisperer bits, Futurama voice casting news and some news about Medium on CBS. I’ve also found some casting news on Game Of Thrones.

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Syfy Picks Up Alphas

Syfy has picked up a 90-minute action-adventure pilot called Alphas.

Alphas is about a team of ordinary citizens who possess hyper-developed neurological abilities. Each person has a slightly special feature about them, but as a team, they combine to have extra-special skills. It’s to be written by Zak Penn (X-Men: The Last Stand), Michael Karnow and BermanBraun Television.

For whatever reason, NBC and ABC passed on Alphas while Syfy, having the opportunity, jumped on this superhero genre show.

Source: Hollywood Reporter

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In Plain Sight

USA renewed In Plain Sight for its third season. Along with this show, they’re also looking to renew Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

It’s been noted that with these 2 shows, plus Burn Notice and Royal Pains, the network picked up all the shows that were slated for renewal. In the industry that’s a pretty rare event, especially for a cable network!

Source: Hollywood Reporter

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Medium

This new season of Medium, starring Patricia Arquette, will be paying tribute to Night of the Living Dead.

The tribute episode, which airs the night before Halloween, will have Arquette inserted into footage of the George Romero classic.

On a light note, keep in mind that Medium has moved to CBS after NBC didn’t renew the show.

In a joking fashion, executive producer Glenn Gordon Caron said that CBS has already aired more promos than NBC did in all 5 years the show aired on that network.

Other things coming up for Medium include storylines about how Allison’s brain tumor affects her abilities. Her oldest child Ariel will rebel while the youngest, Marie, (Marie is played by twins!) will come into her own.

Of course, now that Medium shares a network with Ghost Whisperer, fans keep wondering about a cross-over. So far, no one is saying yes, but it’s noted that if the right quality script were to cross everyone’s desk, well, who knows.

The new season of Ghost Whisperer will start with the birth of Melinda’s baby, and then will jump 5 years into the future.

The reason for this is that her child will have abilities a wee bit beyond Melinda’s and they can’t have an infant talking to ghosts!

CBS will be starting up a web series based on Ghost Whisperer, which will play parallel to the show.

Source: Comic-Con Panel

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Thrones Casting News

Jennifer Ehle has been cast for Thrones, HBO’s adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s fantasy book, Game of Thrones. She’ll be playing Catelyn Stark, Ned Stark’s (Sean Bean) wife.

Source: THR

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Futurama Voices To Stay

It was reported earlier that Comedy Central was looking to recast some of the voice power behind the Futurama characters.

No need to fret folks: The original cast of John DiMaggio, Billy West, Katey Sagal, Maurice LaMarche and Tress MacNeille have all signed on the dotted line with 20th Century Fox TV to reprise their roles.

Thank god. The show would not have been the same without them.

Source: Variety

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Chuck Air Dates

Despite announcements at Comic-Con, Chuck is not coming back any sooner than next spring.

NBC’s primetime president Angela Bromstad, said that Chuck’s reported early airing dates have been a bit optimistic and that the season 3 run of 13 episodes will start in March.

On an odd yet good note, NBC may extend the episode orders to let the show run into summer season. They haven’t decided yet, but if they did that it would give NBC and Chuck some great exposure since summer is the weak time of year for most networks and programming.

Nielsen rated shows from the Top Twenty amongst all viewers for the week ending July 26, 2009 includes the usual fare of shows, all repeats. As you can see, CBS really dominated the scripted drama world – as usual.

Of the top 20 shows, here’s how the scripted dramas did. Note: They are all repeats.